


401. hysteria

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [238]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:40:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9890981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: When Sarah wakes up she is zip-tied to the pillar; the only light is the guttering flare lying discarded on the floor nearby. It is enough light to see Amelia through. Sarah screams.





	

Helena knees Sarah in the stomach. Helena wraps a chain around Sarah’s neck. Helena throws Sarah’s head against the pillar. Sarah’s skull cracks, too bright to see through.

She blacks out.

* * *

When Sarah wakes up she is zip-tied to the pillar; the only light is the guttering flare lying discarded on the floor nearby. It is enough light to see Amelia through. Sarah screams – it’s a painful scream, she can feel it being ripped from her throat. It echoes off the rafters and then folds itself smaller and smaller until it’s gone. And she’s alone. And she’s not alone enough.

“Hello?” she calls out, ragged. “Anybody? Hello? Please—”

The room screams red and another flare rattles to the floor. The light clings to Helena like it loves her; it’s the only one of them in the room that does. The light reflects in Helena’s eyes, the hungry way she’s staring at Sarah. They’re just the same, Helena and the light.

“Helena,” Sarah says, and her voice is soft and shaking with fear. “Let me go.”

Helena frowns at her, and then kicks at the flare gun moodily with her boot and starts scuffing her way around in circles. Her shadow swells against the wall and then ebbs again. She is pacing a neat little orbit around Sarah; every time she gets close Sarah tenses, but Helena doesn’t acknowledge her.

“You’re here,” she says, and it’s partly to herself. “And I am here. And mother is here.”

“She’s _dead_ ,” Sarah says, and not even for the first time this evening. The words fly over Helena’s head, crash against the wall, echo, vanish. Helena pulls at the edges of her sleeves and keeps walking. Then, abruptly, she isn’t walking anymore: she’s crouching in front of Sarah, eyes level, face utterly and perfectly confused.

“We’re sisters,” she says.

“No we’re not,” Sarah says, tugging at the zip ties like the sort of idiot who wants to give Helena an excuse. “We shared a womb, that’s it. You’re not my sister. I’ve _got_ sisters, and they’re not you.”

Helena’s face does a terrible shiver of some emotion deeper and darker than Sarah can understand, and then she’s standing again. “You took my knife,” she says. “Beth gave me a knife, but I gave it back to her. I have no knife.”

She tilts her head slightly to watch Sarah. “Let me tell you a secret, sister,” she says. “I don’t need one.” Then she grins, her teeth red in the dark.

“You gonna kill me?” Sarah says. She winces at it, the shaking of false bravado.

“No,” Helena says. “I am going to fix it. All of it.” She shifts from foot to foot, shy like a child, and then says it: “If you don’t have any sisters but me, then I have to be your sister. Nobody else.”

Fuck. “That’s not how it works,” Sarah says desperately. “Helena, listen to me, that’s not—”

“Shh,” Helena says, the sound weirdly tender in the red light. “That is why,” she says. “Why it didn’t work. I thought she was the only one separating us. But the others are too.

“The others kept me from you,” she says. “If it was only the two of us, we always would have known.”

“That’s not true,” Sarah says, scrabbling at the ground with her heels just out of the need to do _something_. “Helena? Listen to me, alright, you have to listen, it’s not their fault, you don’t have to kill them—”

Helena shudders, full-body, picks up the flare gun and hurls it across the room – a temper tantrum in miniature, only infinitely more terrifying. The gun goes out when it hits the wall. The light vanishes. Sarah’s eyes refuse to adjust; the only marker she has is the sound of Helena’s breathing in the dark.

“You love them,” Helena says. She sounds like she’s on the edge of tears, but with the lights off Sarah doesn’t know. “Why? They aren’t anything. They are copies. We were meant to be together.”

“None of them tried to kill me,” Sarah says flatly. “None of them killed—” and then she has to stop, because her voice isn’t flat anymore.

“No,” Helena says to herself, “no, no, no.” Sarah can just see the edges of her when she shifts, rocking back and forth, heel-toe. “It will fix it. She made us this way. They let us stay separate. All of this, and then we will be alone, and then we will be a family.”

“We can’t be a family if you tie me up,” Sarah says in one sharp final attempt. “That’s not what family does.”

Suddenly Helena is there, in her face; the whites of her eyes are the only living thing in the dark. “You did it to me,” she breathes, “and now we are a family. It was just like this. You me and mother. I put it back together, _sestra_. I made it right.”

She reaches out and brushes her knuckles against Sarah’s face; her touch is gentle, like her hands could never be capable of any other thing. “You stay here,” she says tenderly. “I will go. It won’t take long, sister. Then we can be together.”

“No,” Sarah says, “no, no, Helena? Helena untie me and we can be a family, I _promise_ , let me go and I’ll—”

Helena takes a step back, grabs the pistol from where Sarah had dropped it on the ground. Click click click. “Four bullets,” she says conversationally. She tilts her head, sly, to look at Sarah. Then vanishes around the pillar. Sarah shrieks under her breath as she feels Helena’s hands slip into her own, but then they’re gone again. She has left Sarah with warm, sweaty metal. Sarah leans her head back against the pillar and closes her eyes tight to keep from crying. Two bullets. Helena gave her two bullets.

“I will come back for you,” Helena says, stepping back around the pillar. “I won’t leave you here alone with her.” She clicks the gun back together and squints, tongue poking out at the corner like a kid with a plastic pistol. Then she shoves the gun into the back of her jeans and makes for the stairs.

“I love you,” she calls, and then clatters her way up and outside. The door slams and Sarah opens her mouth and screams. She screams and keeps screaming, kicking at the air, tugging at her wrists, one thrashing moment of pure hysteria. Then she stops and pants for breath, struggling around the sharp edges of her own crying. The screams echo, echo, vanish. No one comes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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